Crises in Scholarly Publishing: 1995-2005

Use the link to access the full text thesis written by Stephan Acerra and submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University. The thesis is available from WesScholar, the institutional repository of Wesleyan University. An excerpt from the introduction reads as follows: “Part of the reason there was so much discussion on the topic of electronic publishing during the period from 1995 to 2005 was that electronic publishing brought about very real changes to the way academic publications were both sold and accessed. While book publication lagged behind in terms of adopting the electronic format, journal publishing experienced a near-complete switch from print to digital format during this period. As a result, the effects of technologies were more broadly felt in journal publishing. In the traditional print system that had been in place for hundreds of years, the costs of producing physical copies of academic journals (printing, typesetting, etc.) were covered by a subscription model. With the advent of the Internet, costs of copying and distributing articles essentially shrank to zero, making several new distribution models possible. It is important to note that the total costs of production were not appreciably lower, since most of the cost of production comes from editors’ salaries. But the electronic format did significantly expand possibilities for the way journals were sold. For instance, journals could now be packaged together as part of site licenses and priced differently to different libraries. Or in a different model, called Open Access, the costs of editing could be paid before publication, with the research made freely available to everyone on the Web. This distribution model was especially important to those who felt the print system was flawed. In the end both new models had important consequences for what was purchased, and who had access to it. By examining the discussions in library and publishing circles alongside the development of electronic publishing models, this thesis poses the question: ‘How did new technologies change the market for scholarly publications?’ And more specifically: ‘Did electronic publishing help solve the problems of the old print system?’”